John T. Chambers Quotes

Nobody has a crystal ball, and part of evolving a business plan is to say, 'I might have said we're going left, but I see the opportunity and we're going right.'

The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.

The successful entrepreneurs on the free market will be the ones most adept at anticipating future business conditions. Yet, the forecasting can never be perfect, and entrepreneurs will continue to differ in the success of their judgments. If this were not so, no profits or losses would ever be made in business.

It's the business that you guys are in too. We try to get as much information as we can and make the best decisions that we can for the football team.

I study my competition for at least an hour a day. I get on the internet, look at what they doing, then I look at ways to defeat them.

The rate of change and innovation occurring across the entire spectrum of society demands that a company like XL utilize the highest level of analytics and information to solve problems for our clients.

The way that organizations and organisms anticipate the future is by taking signals from the past, most the time.

Every part of your business will change based on what I consider predictive analytics of the future.

The key to making a good forecast is not in limiting yourself to quantitative information.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple.

After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

My business is the analytical framework.

I am incredibly bad at predicting the future; I am only smart enough to observe the present and listen to my intuition about tendencies.

It's important to have a really clear strategy so when you are in business, you only have to make micro-strategy changes.

You need to make certain decisions to expand your market.

Future forecasting is all about testing strategies - it's like a wind tunnel.

I don't really follow market research. In the end, I respond to my own instincts.

Anybody can do a deal. The tough part is doing the deal at the right time, being strategic.

We need to be in front of consumer trends and translate those trends into insights and foresights.

Empirical and observational data along with a healthy dash of intuition often have to be combined as business owners begin to look outward, not inward, at what solutions they can provide to their customers.

I can't ever remember being struck by lightning when making a big decision. It's always about taking in more and more data points and making tack adjustments as you figure it out. I call customers, suppliers, industry analysts and try to get as much information as possible.